The Pudding and its visual essays, Morning Brew newsletter and multimedia Life Below Water

Hi!

Welcome to 'On the Net Today' – your go-to newsletter for maximizing your internet experience! Three times a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) we curate a selection of three valuable resources to enhance your browsing time.

Here are three recommendations we've prepared for this Friday:

• The Pudding: explaining ideas through visual storytelling

• Morning Brew: the business newsletter with over 4 million subscribers

• Life Below Water: multimedia on the state of coral reefs

The Pudding: explaining ideas through visual storytelling

The Pudding is a digital publication that specializes in explaining ideas through what they define as "visual essays": original multimedia and interactive presentations inform and entertain simultaneously.

The Pudding's team believes that "visual essays are an emerging form of journalism." They argue that some of the most complex and debated topics get lost in lengthy, 10,000-word "too long; didn't read" articles. Visual storytelling, they believe, makes ideas more accessible.

The Pudding has received numerous awards for its innovative “storytelling”. Just this week, it won one of the five top prizes ("Best of Show") awarded by the Society of News Design (SND) at its annual design awards.

The award recognized the publication's portfolio of recent works, including the following. All of them worth a visit: 

• What does a happily ever after look like? 

• They won’t play Lady A on country radio 

• The Songwriters for Every Top 5 Hit, by Year 

• 24 hours in an invisible epidemic 

• WONKY: An exploration of rhythm and grooves that break the rules

For instance, What does a happily ever after look like? embarks on an exploration of the visual elements employed in illustrating the covers of over 1,400 romance novels:

“A People Map of the US”, a project from a few years back, showcases how city names are replaced by their most Wikipedia’ed resident: people born in, lived in, or connected to a place.

Links: 

• The Pudding

Morning Brew: the business newsletter with over 4 million subscribers

Morning Brew stands as one of the most successful informative business newsletters on the internet, captivating over 4 million free subscribers.

Launched in March 2015 by then-University of Michigan students Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief, it has evolved into a primary news source for millions of young professionals and business leaders seeking insights into the digital world.

Every morning, this newsletter delivers business news in a format that is both informative and entertaining, employing a unique and relatable editorial voice that resonates deeply with its audience.

In 2020, Insider, a subsidiary of the German multinational Axel Springer, acquired Morning Brew. Since then, it has operated as an independent business within Insider's umbrella.

Over the years, Morning Brew has expanded its offerings. Currently, it provides a variety of specialized newsletters, including Marketing Brew, Retail Brew, Tech Brew, and HR Brew, as well as podcasts like Founder's Journal, The Money with Katie Show, Morning Brew Daily, and the TikTok video series Our Future.

Links:

• Morning Brew

• Subscribe to the newsletter

Life Below Water: multimedia on the state of coral reefs

"Though coral reefs occupy less than 1% of the ocean floor, yet they are home to more than 25% of marine life." This is how the multimedia special "Life Below Water" published by the United Nations Environment Programme begins.

The work is based on the report "The Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2020" produced by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN), which is part of the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI).

The report analyzes the evolution of the state of the world's coral reefs over the past 40 years, with data from nearly 2 million observations from more than 12,000 sites in 73 countries.

It paints a picture of “four decades of declining coral abundance, more frequent bleaching, and increasing amounts of algae, which is a sign of declining reef health.” However, the report also reveals “the incredible ability of coral reefs to recover when they are not disturbed by local and global threats.”

Links:

• Life Below Water

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Thank you and happy weekend!